Web standards

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Flash was everywhere, but it wasn’t open. Web developers responded with a push for standards. Getting browser vendors to implement standards—and developers to use them—reinvigorated the web, turning to it to “create once and share across platforms.”

- The Web Standards Project was reallya reaction to the fact that browserswere completely incompatible with each other.- Making redundant versions of the same codeand asking the user to have the knowledgeof which browser they're using,and decide which versionof the site they wanted to go to;that's a bit much.- There was that transitional phase of,hey, we can be part of this conversation,and a whole lot of people saying,what do you mean, you can be part of a conversation?This isn't a conversation.This is they build stuff and we have to dealwith what they give us.

Within the Web Standards Project,it was pretty much well, we're going to try anyway.- We were able to raise our voices and yell,and say these things are standards.This is the only rational way forward.Is for HTML, CSS, and JavaScriptto be completely supported.- A lot of people told them they were crazy,that there was no economic incentive,there was no reason why browser vendorsshould ever be compatible with each other.We were wasting our time.- We went from being hostile toward the browser developersto being friendly toward them, offering to help.

We had brilliant people who understood CSS,who would say, we're going to devise a test,and now we're going to run that test on Opera,and see how Opera's browser does.We're going to run it on Microsoft's browserand see how it does.The idea wasn't to shame them, it was to help them.The browser makers really came on board,and they were people like Chris Wilson at Microsoft,Tantek Celik at Microsoft.Really smart people who came on,who were very much on board with Supporting Standards.- If we hadn't had that, then all the peoplewho'd said that the Web Center's Projectwas wasting it's time,and there was no way that it would everdo what it wanted to do.

They would have been right.- Once we got the browser support,then we had to convince designersand developers to actually use the standards,and that took some more persuasion becausea lot of people were happy with Tables,and a lot of people were happy with Flash.And there were reasons to be happy with both those things,but neither of them was good for the web longterm.(energetic keyboard music)- By 2003, it turned out that there was enough CSSthat was dependable cross-browser,that there needed to be some demo sitesthat show how powerful is CSS.

What can you do with it?- CSS Zen Garden was a site that presentedthe same HTML and allowed for usersacross the web to submit their own designs.However, those designs were only ever implementedby changing just the CSS file.You could never make any changes to the HTML.- CSS Zen Garden was the first sort ofuniversal sense across the community,the first glimmer of how this separationof content and presentation could really work.

- Everybody would come in and submit their own design,their own look and feel that could be dramatically differentfrom any of the ones that came before it.And the only thing that was part of that wasthe CSS and any of the images that were linkedthrough that CSS file.- It demonstrated that you don't actuallyneed to change your markup.You can do amazing, beautiful, gorgeous things in just CSS.- Being able to style content,and use just the enablement of what the webcould provide to createthese immersive, beautiful experiences.

It was a huge moment in time where everything changedon the web, and the creativity level just roseto a completely new dimension.- It had sort of like two majors effects.One, it caused a huge upswing in the adoptionof CSS cause of course people where like,hey, I want to do that with my site.And clearly, CSS is the way to do that.And the second thing it did isit caused people to realize,okay, I can actually move all my presentationout of my HTML.Which then left the HTML to be this simple structureof the document that would just have the semantics of it.

Just have the meanings.Things like headings and paragraphsthat made the documents themselves a lot more accessible.- If my content is separated from my design,and my content semantically marked up,it's going to be easier for,let's say a blind person who's using the screen-readerto navigate my content.- It was a big aha momentfor designers and developers aliketo see how we really could start separating those out,and treat our HTML markupas a representation of the contentin the core being of the web,while maintaining presentation as a separate thingthat could be adaptable.

- Because the way CSS was designed,a lot of that was more forward-compatiblefor different screen widths.It made things like flexible layout,liquid layout, possible.And eventually, made it possible so thatwhen mobile devices got introduced,a huge portion of web pages out there,that were designed in these sort of flexible wayswith CSS, mostly just worked.- Sometimes you just think to yourself,well, of course we can change the directionof our entire industry.And then it actually happened.(electronic music)

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Released

11/6/2017

What Comes Next Is the Future is a documentary film about the web—how it came to be, where it's been, and where it's going. It is the story of a creation that has reshaped the world, as told by the people who built it.

In the film, Matt Griffin knits together a narrative from dozens of conversations with important figures from throughout the web's history. He interviews Tim Berners-Lee, Denise Jacobs, Jeffrey Zeldman, Ethan Marcotte, Chris Wilson, Lyza Danger Gardner, Eric Meyer, Irene Au, Alex Russell, Trent Walton, Val Head, Jonathan Snook, and many more. The result is a series of unique insights about why the web is structured the way it is, why standards matter, how mobile disrupted everything, and why the web isn't done growing.